Tom Lake

In the novel, the story Lara tells about her past as an actress revolves around a summer stock performance of a specific play: Our Town, the Pulitzer Prize–winning drama written by Thornton Wilder in 1938. Since its first performance, Our Town has become a classic of American theater. The play is set in Grover’s Corners, a fictional town in New Hampshire, between the years 1901 and 1913. A notable feature of the play is its minimalist style—it was written to be performed with very little scenery or props, encouraging the audience to populate the stage with their imaginations.

Some of the play’s ideas influenced those of Tom Lake. Like the novel, the play focuses on a young couple, Emily and George, who fall in love and are happily married until nine years later, Emily dies giving birth to her second child. After her funeral, Emily joins the other dead inhabitants of the town, who are able to observe, but not engage with, their loved ones. She comes to the painful realization that those who are still alive do not appreciate their lives. The play’s themes of missed potential and diverging life paths are reflected in Tom Lake’s comparison between two young couples: Lara’s brief romance with Duke and her successful marriage to Joe; the short subplot of her pregnancy and abortion also gestures at an alternative not taken.